Generic Semantic Security against a Kleptographic Adversary

Alexander Russell, Qiang Tang, Moti Yung, Hong-Sheng Zhou

Abstract

Notable recent security incidents have generated intense interest in adversaries which attempt to subvert--perhaps covertly--cryptographic algorithms. In this paper we develop (IND-CPA) Semantically Secure encryption in this challenging setting. This fundamental encryption primitive has been previously studied in the ``kleptographic setting,'' though existing results must relax the model by introducing trusted components or otherwise constraining the subversion power of the adversary: designing a Public Key System that is kletographically semantically secure (with minimal trust) has remained elusive to date. In this work, we finally achieve such systems, even when all relevant cryptographic algorithms are subject to adversarial (kleptographic) subversion. To this end we exploit novel inter-component randomized cryptographic checking techniques (with an offline checking component), combined with common and simple software engineering modular programming techniques (applied to the system's black box specification level). Moreover, our methodology yields a strong generic technique for the preservation of any semantically secure cryptosystem when incorporated into the strong kleptographic adversary setting.